TLDR
Cry Cry aggro boring, every top deck skillless and innovation is dead Cry Cry
Pre-Legend Meta Analysis
Welcome to Hearthstone: The Lost City of Un’Goro, the card game where you vomit cards onto the board like you’ve been on a week long bender! Let’s start this analysis by looking at the top 5 decks that are dominating standard (all ranks) at the moment.
Top 5 decks in all ranks of Standard
| Deck | Winrate |
|---|---|
| Aggro Demon Hunter | 63.2% |
| Menagerie Priest | 60.6% |
| Menagerie Demon Hunter | 59.2% |
| Quest Paladin | 58.7% |
| Menagerie Death Knight | 58.3% |
Struggling to hit legend? You’re not aggroing hard enough! All these decks have two things in common.
- They don’t care about what your opponent wants to do, you either kill them by filling your board 3 times before turn 5, or you die trying.
- A five-year-old can pilot these decks to legend. To be fair, a very mediocre AI could pilot these decks to legend, play whatever you have the mana for and hit your opponent in the face.
Pros and Cons
Pros and Cons of the current meta
| Pros and Cons | Reasons |
|---|---|
| Con | Very one-dimensional deck building, no room for creativity |
| Con | One-sided deck archetypes, other archetypes struggle to keep up |
| Con | People who don’t like playing aggro decks are going to really struggle to enjoy the game |
| Con | Any counter decks such as big combo decks or heavy aggro decks struggle to stay alive for more than 5 turns |
| Pro | There are 4 classes represented in the top 5 decks, providing a range of class representation |
| Pro | Anyone can hit legend by just playing the game, no skill required |
| Pro | Average game lasts around 6 minutes for these decks, so you can hit legend in 4 hours and not touch the game till next season |
So, if you like a one-dimensional aggro race where there is no variability in gameplay, welcome to heaven! However, if you are a creative person who likes to tinker with their decks and make minor tweaks or try to build decks from scratch, run as fast as you can!
Despite all of this, I do realize that there are some decks that do okay against these decks consistently enough for them to be viable, such as Loh Druid whenever it lucks out and opponent doesn’t find lethal by turn 5 (average game: Do nothing, do nothing, do nothing, play Loh, Ceaseless, Giant on turn 4-5, opponent concedes). Other decks that do okay are starship decks for those who love to play the same deck for 3 expansions in a row.
Diamond-Legend Analysis
Until you hit the top ranks of legend nothing much changes, the meta is heavily dominated by aggro decks where you don’t have to think about any of your next moves or build any kind of strategy other than vomit on the board and hit face. In the lower ranks of legend Loh Druid manages to push into the top 5 spots only to be replaced again by another aggro deck at around the 5k mark. It is not until top 1k Legend where we see the first control deck break into the top 5 meta decks in Starship DK, and even then the top spots are still owned by aggro decks. Let’s look at the top 5 decks in top 1k of Legend!
Top 5 decks in top 1k Legend
| Deck | Winrate |
|---|---|
| Aggro Demon Hunter | 55.4% |
| Menagerie Priest | 53.7% |
| Starship Death Knight | 53.7% |
| Menagerie Death Knight | 53.2% |
| Rainbow Menagerie Death Knight | 52.3% |
It requires some of the best players in the world to pilot a control deck for it to become viable and break into the top 5 meta deck list.
Final Words
The current meta follows on from what it had developed into towards the end of last expansion, where aggro Demon Hunter, aggro Priest and board flood Paladin were the most played decks on ladder. Since the introduction of the new expansion there has not been a substantial shift in the meta with only two actual new decks, Loh Druid and Quest Paladin, being strong enough to make the top 5 decks at any point of the ladder. This being said, there is only about a week since the introduction of the new expansion but in previous expansions meta dominant decks have popped up a lot faster than they have in this expansion, suggesting that the room for innovation is very slim for this expansion.
When Blizzard introduced the two-year, six-expansion rotation of the Standard format it was to freshen up the meta and allowing the development team to be more innovative and bold in their card design. This new expansion has been extremely disappointing in that aspect, with there not being a significant shift in the meta but instead a few key cards have made their way into the meta of last expansion.
Finally, I don’t want there to be a complete shift in the meta where every aggro deck dies completely and every game is control v control and lasts 20+ minutes, all I’m asking for is for there to be some variability. A good start would be to look at how low-cost minion health compares to the removal that is available in the game, 1-2 mana minions with 3-4 health and 3-4 mana removal dealing 1-2 damage doesn’t add up.
With love and hope for improvements with the next set of nerfs/buffs,
Iszackk